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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

>bit sensationalized...This excerpt..."Abuse by young professionals"

I don't think so. I'm in one of those environments where long hours are common and it definitely does happen. There are also people using a mix of uppers & downers (need the uppers to be wide awake but then can't sleep when at home hence downers). Hell I'm doing a vaguely similar thing (just with coffee and melatonin). Add a bit of anti-depressants and I don't think "cracked out of their minds" is that far fetched.

I would say its definitely a small minority though (in my workplace)...places like New York & London...not so sure.

>But I'd hardly call myself cracked out on drugs.

Well I'm sure your case is perfectly legitimate, but you've got to admit that self-assessment in this type of situation is rather unreliable.

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A lot of antidepressants are nowhere near as abusable as amphetamine and its salts are. SSRIs, for example, take weeks to have an effect. I take Remeron (mirtazapine) and it was nearly a month before I started to feel better. Amphetamines work much faster.

>SSRIs, for example, take weeks to have an effect.

I am not sure that the time it takes to have an effect is a good metric for whether or not something has potential for abuse. Sure SSRIs take a few weeks to have a noticeably effect but they also takes weeks to tail off. The area under the curve is not necessarily different.

Yeah but you can't pop a Prozac if you're feeling sad and expect to feel better within a reasonable time frame. There's also no high, you just start feeling normal again if you're depressed and it's the right drug.

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-SSRIs-typically-prescribed-bef...

"This last item makes SSRI's abuse-safe: contrary to benzodiazepines or opiate-based painkillers, there's no risk of abusing them for pleasure, as they're, once again not "happy pills" and there's no high. They even worsen symptoms for most people at first. That has to do with their mechanism and is their major flaw but serendipitously it strongly protects against recreational use."

Actually, time-to-action is exactly what separates addictive drugs from non-addictive alternatives. The brain cannot abstract pleasure from what are extremely subtle mechanisms.

I'd say length-of-action is just as big a factor, especially with prescription pain-killers. When people take drugs with short half life's, they tend to 'dose up'. Which, if you're not careful can easily lead to addiction.

Also, I do believe personality comes into play. When I was taking the max dose of Tramadol for over a year, I stopped dead three weeks post-op. The only noticeable side-effect was a runny-nose for a few days, hardly a big deal.

I just mean in terms of potential addictiveness. Mind you, weakly binding drugs will usually be coupled with higher doses. So there's not exactly a separation between time-to-action and length-of-action and binding affinity. Dont worry about coatings and whatnot. If someone wants to abuse a drug, it will most likely be crushed up. Now, if we are talking about the actual substance - depending on whether it is a direct agonist versus a prodrug that goes through multiple passes, or has other rate limiting behavior. -- This will definitely affect the addictiveness of the drug. But 100% in addition to the binding affinity and the receptors affected. So I agree, it's a combination of a bunch of factors. But the ultimate end result, which is perceived duration, perceived impulse, is responsible for a large part of the addictive threshold of that drug. The drug's makeup is clearly responsible for everything, I'm not saying perception trumps the actual chemistry. I just mean, if there is very little perceived impulse, there will most likely be little to no physical dependency. Again, this is based on the tendency of someone to use a drug at what we want to call effective doses, or in abusing it, supra-effective doses.

the speed at which they take effect is actually one of the most important things about addiction, that they make you feel better instantly. future positive outcomes are traded for instant rewards and negative future outcomes.

I'd also not recommend melatonin, but not for the reason that the other poster gave, which suggest that they are taking melatonin in the amounts that it is formulated at pharmacies, which is usually orders of magnitude that of the recommended dose, and probably too late in the evening (>Don't< take it before going to bed, take it ~3 hours before going to bed)

However, after taking it for several years on most days, I developed heart palpitations and other strange sensations. They disappeared a few weeks after I stopped taking it.

>I'd also not recommend melatonin

Yeah I'm aware that its not ideal. Come to think of it I actually told myself I'd stop once peak season is over so I guess thats now. First need to get rid of the coffee though then the falling asleep will be fine.

>take it ~3 hours before going to bed

I thought 1 hour?

Closer to 2-3, but you may have to find the right time for you.

If you have ever gone on an extended camping trip, think about the time between sundown and the time you naturally start wanting to fall asleep.

For DSPS sleepers it can be up to 5hrs.

Don't want to get too far off topic but I had never heard of DSPS. Not gonna get into self-diagnosis but...this is exactly what I have been trying to explain to people for the past 20 years or more. Interesting to learn that it's a "known issue".

How much coffee are you drinking?

Some intense exercise (7+ mile runs) will wipe you out. I'd recommend you keep the coffee, and get your body moving. Allocate 1 hour of your day, to 120+ bpm workouts.

Just TRY not to sleep.

>How much coffee are you drinking?

Not a huge amount. Probably like 2-3 good strength cups.

>Some intense exercise (7+ mile runs) will wipe you out.

Yeah been getting some exercise, but I find it keeps me awake if its too close to bedtime.

I used to drink about that much. Any amount after noon, and I would have trouble sleeping.

Agree with your use case/pattern - taking the pills n hours before when you want to sleep. Cut the pills in half if you can.

Everybody has a different reaction to sleep medicine. You might also consider environmental changes (blackout curtains, earplugs, or meditation before going to sleep - seriously) to address other possible sleep problems.

I take melatonin every day, and I find my ideal time to take it is about an hour before bed. I take a small dose (1mg), which seems plenty, and in fact in the past I took half of that. People vary. You can buy tablets with ridiculously large doses, and I definitely would not recommend taking those regularly.

I've noticed that in addition to becoming more expensive, over the past few years, it's started coming in really high dosages at retail outlets (drug stores, etc).

The cost difference makes it silly for me to buy a bottle of 90 1mg tablets for $10 instead of the bottle of 90 5mg tablets for $13 so I get the higher dosage and just snap bits off of them to swallow. I've seen bottles at our local Rite Aid with 10mg tablets recently! That's just crazy IMO.

From what I understand, after a certain point, there's not much benefit to higher dose and it can screw up your sleep patterns more than it helps.

The 1 mg bottle may be more effective. Bigger isn't always better.

> I developed heart palpitations

http://drsircus.com/medicine/magnesium/magnesium-the-ultimat...

Thanks for this, I get plenty of magnesium. I'm reasonably certain that the extended melatonin use was a primary cause, in my case.

OT: wouldn't recommend melatonin for constant use. more useful in setting a fixed bedtime; taking it too often may cause issues falling asleep.

Anecdotally, I can attest to this. I took melatonin for 3 days straight and my circadian dysregulation crept up again on the 4th.

I've found that simple sleep hygiene habits (no blue light exposure 30 mins before, taking a shower, etc) facilitates better sleep than melatonin.

I use melatonin to recover from jet lag. It's not to _get_ to sleep, it's to stay asleep when my body normally thinks it should be getting up.

If you can find one, I'd recommend* an S+ by ResMed. It uses radar to track your sleep and can discern what phase of sleep you're in. It tracks how long it takes you to go to sleep and can offer specific hints to address issues you might be having. The app hasn't been kept up to date, but if you've got an older iOS 8.x device you're not going to upgrade that would pair well with it.

*Disclaimer: I worked at ResMed on the S+. I no longer work at ResMed but I still like my S+.

I really hope you mean sonar.

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